Runaways
by IoIngridWeaver
Summary: In which Vanessa runs away, Chuck runs back, and in which circumstances and chance bring them together only for reality to come between them. Years down the road a deadly accident sends Vanessa back into the world of the Upper East Side. Now the pair must ask themselves; will they just keep circling the drain or will they finally stop running from what everyone else can see? AUS5ON


Let Me Love You Until You Learn To Love Yourself

Everyone in the Upper East Side seems to have this strange perception of them. That she is the one who saves him and he is the only one who is hallow and broken and lonely and desperate. She knows that it is not true. She is just better at hiding it than he is. She is so good at it is not until almost six months into whatever this thing they are doing is that he even begins to notice the cracks in her armor.

She does not tell anything how it happened and it does not matter what anyone else thinks. At least this is what she tells herself as she drags a drunk Chuck into the Empire. And once they get up into the penthouse it is she and not the drunkard who runs into the washroom and pukes their guts out. And it is him and not her who holds back the hair and tells her it will be alright.

This cycle continues for a week before he confronts and guesses what she has been hiding for almost eight weeks. She is almost four months pregnant at the age of twenty-one and she does not tell him who the father is. She only tells him it is not someone they know and that she thinks they should stop whatever this is.

Whatever this is seems to be nothing what people expected. They do not sleep together and are not together. Sure there have been a few heated kisses but more so it is her picking him up drunk and him listening to her rant and just more about having someone in their corners.

Everyone else has paired off; Dan with Serena and Jenny and Nate and Blair and her Prince. Vanessa came back to the city and had run into Chuck and she had dragged him home. Even after everything she had done she was not the cold just to leave him alone in a cold dark alleyway.

Once he knows her secrets he helps her hide it. He gets her the best doctors and spirits her away to Canada of all places and it is in Vancouver of all places she is induced into labor and gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. A boy she loves and want but can't look at or hold. She knows it is not his fault and she is the woman who gave birth to him but she can't be his mother. The wound is still too raw and the pain too deep.

But it is Chuck who holds him and it is Chuck who asks her what she wants to do. And it takes every bit of strength within her to ask for his help. The entire pregnancy he has always given his help because he states he owes her. She has never had to ask. What he owes her she does not know but now she is asking, no begging him, to help her give her child a safe and normal home far away from their lives and the circumstances of his birth.

She has not said anything but she thinks Chuck suspects and knows what happened. But still he takes out his phone and barely an hour later he says he has a couple. He asks if she wants to meet them and she shakes her head and says she trusts him. It is the shock and the widening of his eyes that tells her that she said something he did not expect.

A day later there is no more Baby Abrams and Vanessa and Chuck part ways. She goes off to parts unknown to try and pick up her pieces and he goes off to New York to comfort Blair who has spilt from her Prince.

As they say goodbye in the airport she tells herself this has just been a hic up in her life's plan and that she did the right thing. But still her body and heart ache for a baby she knows she could not have and for a man she has no right to. In the end they simply smirk at each other and say goodbye.

And so she treks off to Atlanta and ends up in the backwoods of Thailand where she volunteers and winds up in an orphanage. And it is here among their smiling faces and hopeful eyes and giggling whispers that Vanessa begins to rediscover what she was, who she lost, and who she hopes she can become one day. Taking out a camera she tapes everything and learns the language and brushes up on her French with some of the nuns.

And it here Vanessa endures the worst struggle of her life when the wave crashes. A tsunami that wipes out everything she has come to love in this small coastal orphanage and village.

It is here Vanessa risks her life not thinking of the consequences when she gets children up onto the roof and almost drowns when she hits her head on a brick. And it is here she wakes and discovers she almost drowned and was lucky to even survive.

Six months after the tragedy she moves on knowing she has learned all she can from the place and she knows it is time to leave. She leaves behind the children and the nuns and the first feeling of home she has felt in an eternity. But despite everything she knows she will carry this place and the memories within her for the rest of her life.

So like a drifter she moves on and winds up in Moscow of all places. And it is here among an ongoing revolution she begins to rediscover her long forgotten love of change and the fight she was once famous for. And on a whim she sends him a bottle of cheep Russian scotch and a postcard that simply says thank you.

She moves on in less than three months and winds up in Madrid simply enjoying the ocean and everything life here has to offer.

And this pattern continues on and off until she is twenty-five. Never in more than one place for more than five months, earning her way, and filming it all. And slowly but surely Vanessa Abrams is healing and building back up the pieces.

But everything changes that summer in London. She does not know how or why she ends up there at the same time Jenny is showing a collection and Dan is there to support her. Even as her heart leaps in her chest to see both of them Vanessa knows that it is better this way.

She is Nessa Adams now, or how she has been known for the past four years. She has left Vanessa and her weakness and hatred behind. Or so she thinks and tries to convince herself.

But this is the day her life and everything inside of it changes. it is raining hard that day and when she is crossing a busy London cobblestone street to get to her job as a tour guide she sees a kid in the middle of the street and his mother screaming and an oncoming car. And it is then she acts. Runs and pushes the kid out of the way. And it is then she remembers nothing but pain and the force of the car and the smell of her own blood.


End file.
